Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
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Chapter Eight: Discipline—or Warriors Are Not Always Soldiers
Rorke’s Drift, January 22–23, 1879
There is a heavily footnoted official British history of the war that is a model of nineteenth-century scholarship: Narrative of Field Operations Connected with the Zulu War of 1879 (London, 1881). A number of fascinating memoirs were also published in connection with the war. The Zulu-speaking Henry Harford was attached to the Natal Native Contingent and was involved in the thick of the fighting of the center column; see D. Child, ed., The Zulu War Journal of Colonel Henry Harford, C.B., (Hamden, Conn., 1980). A defense of Colonel Durnford, whose misguided deployments may have lost Isandhlwana, together with a contemporary sympathetic account of the Zulus, is found in F. E. Colenso (daughter of the bishop of Natal), History of the Zulu War and Its Origin (Westport, Conn., 1970). For an account written shortly after Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift by a veteran of tribal wars in South Africa, see also T. Lucas, The Zulus and the British Frontiers (London, 1879). There is a small amount of information about the end of the Zulu War in the diaries of Sir Garnet Wolseley: A. Preston, ed., The South African Journal of Sir Garnet Wolseley, 1879–1880 (Cape Town, 1973). More valuable is a memoir of a Boer translator employed by the Zulus, Cornelius Vign, whose diary was translated from the Dutch by Bishop J. W. Colenso: C. Vign, Cetshwayo’s Dutchman: Being the Private Journal of a White Trader in Zululand During the British Invasion (New York, 1969).
J. Guy has written a sympathetic portrait of the fall and aftermath of the Zulu kingdom that makes much of the economic foundations of the war, specifically the exploitative nature of British and Boer colonial life: The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1879–1884 (Cape Town, 1979). See also C. F. Goodfellow, Great Britain and South African Confederation, 1870–1881 (London, 1966), and especially J. P. C. Laband and P. S. Thompson, Field Guide to the War in Zululand and the Defence of Natal 1879 (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 1983).
For a classic narrative of the rise of the Zulus and the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, see D. Morris, The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 (New York, 1965). The major campaigns of the war are covered well by D. Clammer, The Zulu War (New York, 1973); M. Barthorp, The Zulu War (Poole, England, 1980), which contains invaluable illustrations; and A. Lloyd, The Zulu War, 1879 (London, 1974). The most up-to-date accounts of the war is R. Edgerton, Like Lions They Fought: The Zulu War and the Last Black Empire in South Africa (New York, 1988), which has graphic accounts of the actual fighting, and S. Clarke, ed., Zululand at War: The Conduct of the Anglo-Zulu War (Johannesburg, 1984).
There are a number of monographs devoted entirely to Rorke’s Drift. Perhaps the best known is M. Glover, Rorke’s Drift: A Victorian Epic (London, 1975), but there are also fascinating illustrations and photographs in J. W. Bancroft, Terrible Night at Rorke’s Drift (London, 1988). See, too, R. Furneux, The Zulu War: Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift (London, 1963).
The bibliography on Zulu culture and the brief existence of its empire is huge, but besides comprehensive accounts, there are accessible introductions in English to the main issues and problems. See the various surveys in J. Selby, Shaka’s Heirs (London, 1971); A. T. Bryant’s classic, The Zulu People: As They Were Before the White Men Came (New York, 1970); and J. Y. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus (New York, 1970). An American missionary, Josiah Tyler, has left a vivid narrative of Zulu life and customs in Forty Years Among the Zulus (Boston, 1891). Perhaps the best account of the Zulu army is I. Knight, The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: From Shaka to Cetshwayo, 1818–1879 (London, 1995).
For a small sampling of the myriad of publications on the nineteenth-century British army, see G. Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (London, 1977); G. St. J. Barclay, The Empire Is Marching (London, 1976); T. Pakenham, The Boer War (New York, 1979); M. Carver, The Seven Ages of the British Army (New York, 1984); and J. Haswell, The British Army: A Concise History (London, 1975). For the importance of drill, see W. H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); and for the relationship of drill, bravery, and the nature of courage, see W. Miller, The Mystery of Courage (Cambridge, Mass., 2000).
For general accounts of the nature of tribal warfare, see B. Ferguson and N. L. Whitehead, eds., War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (Santa Fe, N.M., 1992); J. Haas, ed., The Anthropology of War (Cambridge, 1990); and especially H. H. Turney-High’s classic, Primitive War: Its Practice and Concepts (Columbia, S.C., 1971).
Chapter Nine: Individualism
Midway, June 4–8, 1942
The battle of Midway has been the subject of several books, and often marks the “midway” chapter in comprehensive treatments of the Pacific theater of operations during World War II. For monographs on the battle itself, one should begin with G. Prange (assisted by D. Goldstein and K. Dillion), Miracle at Midway (New York, 1982), which covers the main problems. P. Frank and J. Harrington, Rendezvous at Midway: U.S.S. Yorktown and the Japanese Carrier Fleet (New York, 1967), has an analysis of the repair, return, and sinking of the Yorktown in the battle. Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory (New York, 1967) is a well-written popular account that draws on firsthand oral and written interviews with both Japanese and American veterans of the battle. In addition, there are at least four general studies that largely describe the battle from the American side: A. Barker, Midway: The Turning Point (New York, 1971); R. Hough, The Battle of Midway (New York, 1970); W. W. Smith, Midway: Turning Point of the Pacific (New York, 1966); and I. Werstein, The Battle of Midway (New York, 1961).
For chapter treatments of Midway in general histories of the Pacific theater, still invaluable is Samuel Eliot Morison’s Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942, vol. 4 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (New York, 1949); to be complemented by J. Costello, The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (New York, 1981); and H. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, Md., 1983). D. van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign, World War II: The U.S.-Japanese Naval War, 1941–45, has a good general review of the battle with invaluable observations from the Japanese side. In John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare (New York, 1989), Midway is discussed as representative of the gradual diminution of the battleship in favor of the aircraft carrier. R. Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York, 1996), also has some astute pages devoted to the battle that emphasize Japanese advantages in weapons and experience. The importance of American intelligence operations is discussed in D. Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York, 1996), and R. Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Cyphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York, 1982).
There are a number of helpful photographs, drawings, charts, tables, and statistics that concern the Japanese navy in A. Watts and B. Gordon, The Imperial Japanese Navy (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), and J. Dunnigan and A. Nofi, Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific (New York, 1995).
Two veterans of the Midway-Aleutian campaign, M. Fuchida and M. Okumiya, in Midway, the Battle That Doomed Japan: The Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, Md., 1955), wrote a riveting memoir from the Japanese side, which is balanced and reflective throughout. M. Okumiya and J. Horikoshi, along with M. Caidin (Zero! [New York, 1956]), discuss Midway in the context of the Pacific naval air war. Equally interesting is the diary of M. Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–45 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1991). There is an anthology of Japanese eye-witness accounts on the major naval encounters of the Pacific theater in D. Evans, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II in the Words of Former Naval Officers (Annapolis, Md., 1986).
There are also fine chapters from the Japanese point of view in R. O’Connor, The Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II (Annapolis, Md., 1969); P. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annapolis, Md., 1978); E. Andrie, Death of a N
avy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II (New York, 1957); and J. Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, 2 vols. (New York, 1970).
Much of the battle can be learned from biographies of the opposing supreme commanders. See H. Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy (Annapolis, Md., 1979); J. Potter, Yamamoto: The Man Who Menaced America (New York, 1965); T. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston, 1974); and E. Hoyt, How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals (New York, 1970).
A number of books discuss the process of Westernization in Japan. See, in general, S. Eisenstadt, Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View (Chicago, 1995); and M. and S. Harries, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, 1868–1945 (New York, 1991). A more academic and detailed appraisal is found in J. Arnason, Social Theory and Japanese Experience: The Dual Civilization (London and New York, 1997). The specifics of Japan’s adaptation of Western military practice and European technology during the nineteenth century are found in E. L. Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, Ariz., 1965); R. P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (London, 1959); and especially S. P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).
On the history of the Japanese military and Japan’s cultural assumptions in the organization and practice of war, see T. Cleary, The Japanese Art of War: Understanding the Culture of Strategy (Boston, 1991), and R. J. Smethurst, A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974). Robert Edgerton, Warriors of the Rising Sun: A History of the Japanese Military (New York, 1997), provides a good discussion of Japanese behavior toward conquered peoples and captives, and suggests that the 1930–45 period of brutality may have been an aberration in the long history of Japanese military practice.
Chapter Ten: Dissent and Self-Critique
Tet, January 31–April 6, 1968
More has been written on Vietnam than perhaps on all the other battles of this volume combined, no doubt reflecting the wealth and influence of American media and publishing, and the somewhat self-absorption of the present generation of Americans who grew up in the aftermath of World War II. Obvious differences exist over the conduct of the Vietnam War, but increasingly they seem predicated more on chronology than ideology. Much of what was published between 1965 and 1978 is hostile to the American presence and strategy, either the work of leftist critics who emphasize the inhumanity of the United States’ presence, or of more conservative scholars who cite military ineptitude coupled with weak political leadership.
But by the early 1980s—after the absence of free elections in a unified Vietnam, the mass exodus from Vietnam by the boat people, the Cambodian holocaust, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage crisis—there was a gradual but unmistakable shift in perceptions about Vietnam. While most Americans still agreed that the war had been fought wrongly, and perhaps unnecessarily, a good many argued that nevertheless the cause was more right than wrong, and the war could have been won with the right decisive military strategy. There was a confident air among revisionists who felt history had somehow proved them right, and a worried, if sometimes apologetic, stance by most earlier vehement critics, some of whom had visited North Vietnam, praised the communist regimes of Southeast Asia, and broadcast on radio propaganda against U.S. soldiers in the field.
For a synopsis on various topics of research, see J. S. Olson, The Vietnam War: Handbook of the Literature and Research (Westport, Conn., 1993), and R. D. Burns and M. Leitenberg, The Wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, 1945–1982 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1983). For Tet itself, begin with the somewhat dated but still invaluable monograph by D. Oberdorfer, Tet! (New York, 1971). There are some insightful essays on the offensive collected in M. J. Gilbert and W. Head, eds., The Tet Offensive (Westport, Conn., 1996). See also W. Pearson, Vietnam Studies: The War in the Northern Provinces, 1966–8 (Washington, D.C., 1975). There are also good chapters on the Tet Offensive in standard histories of the battle, e.g., S. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (Novato, Calif., 1985). P. Braestrup’s massive two-volume study of the coverage of Tet remains a damning portrait of the American media: P. Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, Colo., 1977). Some interesting maps and illustrations of the Tet Offensive are found in J. Arnold, Tet Offensive 1968: Turning Point in Vietnam (London, 1990).
For the failures of United States intelligence to give an accurate prediction of the Tet surprise, see R. F. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London, 1995), who blames the political infighting among intelligence agencies that resulted in failure to make proper use of the excellent raw data that were gathered. There are some invaluable essays on the war and especially the role of airpower during Tet in D. Showalter and J. G. Albert, An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964–1973 (Chicago, 1993); for military operations in the aftermath of Tet, see R. Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York, 1993).
For statistics about the soldiers who fought in Vietnam—age, economic background, type of service, race, casualty ratios, etc.—see T. Thayer, War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam (Boulder, Colo., 1985); and for misconceptions about Vietnam veterans: E. T. Dean, Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Norman, Okla., 1989). Some of the political intrigue in Washington that surrounded Tet is discussed in T. Hoopes, The Limits of Intervention: An Inside Account of How the Johnson Policy of Escalation in Vietnam Was Reversed (New York, 1973), who devotes a chapter to the offensive.
Reasons for the American loss in Vietnam are examined carefully by J. Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis, Md., 1998)—mostly military ineptitude and the absence of political and strategic reasons for being there in the first place. G. Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York, 1978); L. Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York, 1999); and M. Lind, Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict (New York, 1999), all mention the misrepresentations of Tet as part of larger efforts to correct the standard wisdom that Vietnam was not winnable and was morally wrong—as represented perhaps best by the popular accounts of S. Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York, 1983), and N. Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York, 1988).
Tet looms large in various collections of primary documents, speeches, and articles that are designed as readers for university courses; the editors of such anthologies adopt a critical approach to America’s intervention and the military’s conduct in general in Vietnam. See J. Werner and D. Hunt, eds., The American War in Vietnam (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); G. Sevy, ed., The American Experience in Vietnam: A Reader (Norman, Okla., 1989); M. Gettleman et al., eds., Vietnam and America: A Documented History (New York, 1995); and J. Rowe and R. Berg, eds., The American War and American Culture (New York, 1991). More balanced collections of documents are found (through 1965) in M. Raskin and B. Fall, eds., The Vietnam Reader: Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis (New York, 1965), and H. Salisbury, ed., Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War (New York, 1994). For favorable accounts of those protesters who went to North Vietnam, see M. Hershberger, Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War (Syracuse, N.Y., 1998), and J. Clinton, The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965–1972 (Boulder, Colo., 1995).
There are also numerous recent narratives of the twenty-six-day, house-to-house fighting at Hué, many of them memoirs by veterans of the ordeal. See N. Warr, Phase Line Green: The Battle for Hue, 1968 (Annapolis, Md., 1997); K. Nolan, Battle for Hue, Tet, 1968 (Novato, Calif., 1983); G. Smith, The Siege of Hue (Boulder, Colo., 1999); and E. Hammel, Fire in
the Streets: The Battle for Hue, Tet 1968 (Chicago, 1991). On Khesanh, see the moving narrative of J. Prados and R. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh (New York, 1991), and cf. R. Pisor, The Siege of Khe Sanh (New York, 1982). The role of airpower in the siege is well chronicled in B. Nalty, Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh (Washington, D.C., 1973), published by the Office of Air Force History.
There are good revisionist, strongly opinionated memoirs written shortly after the war by some of the principal American military figures involved. Start with W. C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York, 1976); M. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York, 1972); and U. S. Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (New York, 1978).
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Carnage and Culture
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian who is a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno. He has written several scholarly and popular books on ancient history and classical warfare, including The Other Greeks, The Western Way of War, and The Soul of Battle. He lives in Selma, California.
Also by Victor Davis Hanson
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
The Western Way of War
Hoplites (editor)
The Other Greeks
Fields Without Dreams
Who Killed Homer? (with John Heath)
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks
The Soul of Battle
The Land Was Everything
Bonfire of the Humanities